ASOK15058U Re-tooling Social
Analysis: Behaviors, Networks, Ideas in the digital age (Summer
2019)

This course equips students with the analytic skills and
reflexive capacities needed to engage critically but productively
with various new 'device-aware' styles of social analysis
assisted by digital and computational means. It does so, firstly,
by way of reading paradigmatic analyses of the nature of social
behaviors, networks and ideas, focusing both on classical concepts
and contemporary research frontiers.

Examples are drawn from across all the social-science disciplines,
and core interdisciplinary convergences are identified. Second, the
course takes students through all the methodological steps of
social research design, analysis and interpretation, tying these
steps to practical examples and to students' own projects (from
other courses). Here, key initial questions include: what are the
implications of working with different data types (static vs.
dynamic; broad vs. deep); how to think about and practically handle
data biases stemming from digital platforms and devices (noise,
bots etc.); how to build ethical considerations in from the start
of data harvesting (digital research ethics)?

In a next step, students are introduced to key methodological
traditions often underlying the analysis of behaviors, networks and
ideas, respectively (causal-experimental; pattern search;
meaning-oriented), as well as to ways of working across them using
various digital data sources as well as combining with other
sources (including both quantitative and qualitative). In a final
step, students learn how to think critically about the
interpretation of their social data analyses, including issues of
internal and external validity, representativeness and
generalizability, as well as analytical induction and concept work.

Rounding up, thirdly, students are introduced to frameworks for
thinking about the changing place of social research in digital
societies, including the possibilities and challenges opened up by
greater interdisciplinary collaboration as well as new types of
academia-industry-government partnerships.

Registration deadline for courses is June 1 for Autumn semester
and December 1 for Spring semester. Registration deadline for
Summer school is June 1.
When registered you will be signed up for exam.
International exchange students must sign up by filling in an
application
form:
course registration.

Individual/group.
Free written take-home essays are assignments for which students
define and formulate a problem within the parameters of the course
and based on an individual exam syllabus. The free written
take-home essay must be no longer than 10 pages. For group
assignments, an extra 5 pages is added per additional student.
Further details for this exam form can be found in the Curriculum
and in the General Guide to Examinations at KUnet.

Exam registration requirements

Sociology students must be enrolled under MSc Curriculum 2015 or
BSc 2016 Curriculum to take this exam.